SOURCE: "Literature and Serfdom: Gogol, Lermontov and Goncharov," in Russia Discovered: Nineteenth-Century Fiction from Pushkin to Chekhov, Barnes and Noble Books 1976, pp. 37-70.

In the following excerpt, Calder assesses A Hero of Our Time as Lermontov's single "great novel."

[Mikhail Lermontov] managed in his brief and unhappy existence to earn himself a place as Pushkin's successor among Russian poets and to write one great novel, A Hero of Our Time. …

Lermontov was hardly an attractive personality: Turgenev remembered that 'His swarthy face and large, motionless dark eyes exuded a sort of sombre and evil strength, a sort of pensive scornfulness and passion'. His most famous narrative poetry is characteristically 'Romantic', making free use of the supernatural and expressing a deep love of nature. He died at an age when most young writers have barely started to escape from youthful imitation and self-indulgence; this makes it all the more...